Kajabi and Teachable are the two names most course creators compare first, and both have earned that reputation: Kajabi for its all-in-one marketing-plus-courses approach, Teachable for being a simpler, course-focused platform that’s easy to launch on fast. Both are genuinely capable products used by thousands of real businesses.
Last updated: 6 November 2026
Quick verdict: Pick Kajabi for an all-in-one marketing suite if you can carry $143 a month or more. Pick Teachable for a course-first platform from $29 a month, remembering Starter takes a 7.5% transaction fee. Pick Learnomy to host courses inside your own WordPress site with Stripe or PayPal checkout and no platform cut on what you sell.
Learnomy takes a different position: a complete course platform that lives inside your own WordPress site, with no monthly subscription required to sell your first course and no platform cut on the sales you make. We compared what Kajabi and Teachable actually cost once you factor in subscriptions and transaction fees against what Learnomy includes from a standing start.
Table of Contents
- Market snapshot
- Why Kajabi and Teachable Get Compared
- How We Evaluated These Three
- Kajabi: All-in-One Marketing, All-in-One Price
- Teachable: Simple to Start, Fees on the Starter Plan
- Learnomy: Free Forever, No Platform Cut, Ever
- A Real-World Scenario: A Coach Launching a $500 Course
- Setup Time and What You’re Actually Building
- What a Year (and Three Years) Actually Costs
- Side-by-Side Comparison Table
- Who Each Platform Is Actually Built For
- How to Choose
- FAQs
- Sources
The global online course market is projected to grow from roughly $200 billion in 2024 to over $370 billion by 2030, and the biggest factor separating profitable course creators from the rest isn’t the platform’s feature list, it’s how much of each sale the platform keeps before the creator sees it.
Market snapshot
- The global creator economy market was valued at USD 252.3 billion in 2025 and is projected to reach USD 1,345.5 billion by 2033, growing at 23.3% a year from 2026 to 2033, according to Grand View Research.
- Kajabi lists three paid plans at $143, $199 and $399 a month on annual billing ($179, $249 and $499 billed monthly) per the Kajabi pricing page (checked 6 November 2026).
- Teachable lists Starter at $29 a month on annual billing ($39 monthly) with a 7.5% transaction fee, and two higher plans at $69 and $139 a month on annual billing ($89 and $189 monthly) with 0% transaction fees per the Teachable pricing page (checked 6 November 2026).
Why Kajabi and Teachable Get Compared
Kajabi positions itself as a full marketing suite: courses, email marketing, landing pages, sales funnels, and a community space, all under one subscription. Its Basic plan starts at $143/month billed annually (or $179/month billed monthly) for 5 products, 1 community, 1 website, and 2,500 contacts, with 2 admin users and a 2.9% + $0.30 card processing fee. The Growth plan runs $199/month annually and adds a branded mobile app plus API access, with a lower 2.8% processing fee. Pro, at $399/month annually, unlocks unlimited products and three communities, with the lowest processing rate at 2.7%.
Teachable takes a narrower, course-first approach. Its Starter plan is $29/month billed annually for 5 products, but it carries a 7.5% transaction fee on every sale on top of standard payment processing, a cost that adds up fast for anyone doing real volume. The Builder plan at $69/month annually drops the platform transaction fee to 0% and adds an affiliate program. Growth, at $139/month annually, adds certificates, branding removal, and bulk imports.
What both share is the same pattern: a genuinely useful product, but the complete feature set, and in Teachable’s case, escaping the transaction fee entirely, requires climbing past the entry-level tier, and the subscription runs every month whether you sell one course or a hundred.
How We Evaluated These Three
We looked at the real monthly and annual cost at each tier, including transaction fees where they apply, what’s actually included at the entry-level plan versus what requires an upgrade, how payouts and payment processing work, and what happens to your course content and student data if you ever want to leave the platform. We also weighed setup friction: how much of the course-building experience is drag-and-drop versus requiring outside tools, and how each platform handles the specific question of who owns the infrastructure the course actually runs on.
A platform’s advertised monthly price only tells part of the story for a working course business. The real comparison has to include what happens as sales volume grows: does the cost stay flat, scale with revenue through a transaction fee, or scale with list size through contact caps. Each of these three platforms answers that question differently, and the answer matters more at $50,000 in annual course sales than it does at $5,000. A creator who ignores this distinction early often finds themselves re-platforming a year or two in, once the gap between what they expected to pay and what they’re actually paying becomes too large to ignore.
Kajabi: All-in-One Marketing, All-in-One Price
Kajabi bundles course delivery with email marketing, landing page building, sales funnels, and a community space into one subscription. For a creator who wants to run their entire business, marketing included, from a single dashboard, that consolidation has real value: no connecting a separate email tool, no separate funnel builder.
Key strengths:
- Unlimited marketing emails, landing pages, funnels, and access groups on every plan, no caps that force an upgrade just for marketing volume
- No revenue sharing on course sales beyond standard payment processing, you keep what you earn after the processing fee
- Growth and Pro tiers include a branded mobile app at no extra cost, a $199 value bundled in rather than a separate purchase
Where it falls short:
- The entry-level Basic plan starts at $143/month annually ($1,716/year) before you’ve made a single sale, a real fixed cost for a creator still validating demand
- Additional contacts beyond each tier’s cap cost $125/month per 25,000-contact block, a cost that scales with your email list regardless of how many are actually buyers
- Jumping to Pro for unlimited products and multiple communities means $399/month annually, nearly $4,800/year
Teachable: Simple to Start, Fees on the Starter Plan
Teachable strips away the marketing-suite ambitions and focuses on getting a course online and sold quickly. The builder experience is straightforward, and AI-powered course creation tools are included even on the entry tier.
Key strengths:
- The Starter plan is genuinely cheap at $29/month annually, a low barrier for testing whether a course idea sells
- AI-powered course creation, student mobile apps, and global payment support are included from the Starter tier up
- Builder tier at $69/month annually eliminates the platform transaction fee entirely and adds a built-in affiliate program
Where it falls short:
- The Starter plan’s 7.5% transaction fee on every sale is steep, on a $500 course that’s $37.50 lost per sale before payment processing fees even apply
- Course certificates and removing Teachable’s own branding require the Growth tier at $139/month annually
- No marketing suite built in, email marketing, funnels, and landing pages need separate tools
Learnomy: Free Forever, No Platform Cut, Ever
Learnomy runs entirely inside WordPress, with no external subscription and no platform transaction fee at any tier, including the free plan. Course creation, checkout via built-in Stripe and PayPal integration (no WooCommerce required), and student management all ship in the free version with unlimited courses and students.
Key strengths:
- Zero platform fee on any sale, at any tier, a genuine structural difference from both Kajabi’s processing-fee-only model and Teachable’s Starter-tier 7.5% cut
- Unlimited courses and students on the free plan, with no contact caps or product caps forcing an upgrade
- Your data lives on your own server, there’s no dependency on a third-party platform staying in business or keeping its pricing stable
Worth knowing:
- No built-in email marketing suite or sales funnel builder the way Kajabi bundles one, you’d pair Learnomy with a WordPress email/marketing plugin if you want that
- You’re responsible for your own WordPress hosting, though this is typically a modest cost (a few dollars to $20-30/month for most creators) compared to a platform subscription
- Pro tier at $149/year unlocks AI course/quiz authoring, cohorts, learning paths with prerequisites, content drip scheduling, 11 quiz types with rubrics, and Stripe Connect payouts for multi-instructor revenue splits
A Real-World Scenario: A Coach Launching a $500 Course
Picture a coach launching a single $500 course and expecting to sell roughly 20 copies in the first year, $10,000 in revenue.
On Kajabi’s Basic plan, the subscription alone runs $1,716/year, more than the course’s expected first-year revenue minus costs would comfortably absorb for a brand-new creator, though the marketing tools bundled in could help drive those 20 sales through funnels and email sequences that would otherwise require separate tools.
On Teachable’s Starter plan, the $29/month subscription is cheap ($348/year), but the 7.5% transaction fee on $10,000 in sales is $750, pushing the real cost to roughly $1,098 for the year, before standard payment processing fees. If that coach’s course sells grow to $30,000 in year two, the Starter-tier fee alone would be $2,250, likely making the jump to Builder’s flat $69/month with 0% fee the obvious move by that point.
On Learnomy’s free plan, the coach pays $0 in subscription and $0 in platform transaction fees, only standard Stripe/PayPal processing (roughly 2.9% + $0.30, the same processor fee every platform ultimately passes through). On $10,000 in sales, that’s roughly $320 in processing, full stop, no separate platform cut on top. The only real cost is WordPress hosting, typically $10-25/month for a course site at this scale.
Setup Time and What You’re Actually Building
All three platforms get a basic course online within a day or two for someone comfortable with the respective interface, but what you’re actually building differs. Kajabi and Teachable are fully managed: no server, no plugin updates, no backups to think about, the tradeoff being you’re building inside a system you don’t control and can’t export cleanly if you leave.
Learnomy requires a WordPress site as a starting point, which is either a non-issue (if you already run one for a blog, coaching business, or community) or a genuine extra step (if you’re starting from nothing). Once WordPress is in place, installing Learnomy and publishing a first course is comparable in effort to Teachable’s course builder, drag-and-drop sections, lessons, and topics with seven content types. The real difference shows up later: because the course lives as WordPress content on your own server, you can extend it with any WordPress plugin, a community plugin, a gamification layer, a custom checkout flow, without waiting on the platform vendor to build that feature or paying for an upgrade tier to unlock it.
What a Year (and Three Years) Actually Costs
On $10,000 in annual course sales, Kajabi Basic costs $1,716/year in subscription plus standard processing. Teachable Starter costs $348/year subscription plus roughly $750/year in platform transaction fees on that revenue level, or Builder at $828/year subscription with $0 platform fee. Learnomy’s free tier costs $0/year in subscription and platform fees, only standard payment processing.
| 3-year total on $10k/yr sales | Cost |
|---|---|
| Kajabi (Basic) | ~$5,148 (3 × $1,716/year subscription) |
| Teachable (Starter, with fees) | ~$3,294 (3 × ~$1,098/year incl. transaction fees) |
| Learnomy (Free) | $0 subscription, standard processing only |
Figures are approximate, based on publicly listed pricing as of October 2026, assuming $10,000/year in course sales. Actual processing fees vary by payment processor and region.
Kajabi vs Teachable vs Learnomy: Side by Side
| Kajabi | Teachable | Learnomy | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entry price | $143/mo annual | $29/mo annual | $0, forever |
| Platform transaction fee | None (processing only) | 7.5% on Starter, 0% above | None, any tier |
| Marketing suite built in | Yes, unlimited | No | No (WP plugins) |
| Branded mobile app | Growth tier+ | All tiers (generic) | Not native |
| Data ownership | Hosted on Kajabi | Hosted on Teachable | Your own server |
| Multi-instructor revenue split | Not native | Not native | Yes, Pro tier |
Who Each Platform Is Actually Built For
Kajabi fits a creator who’s already running, or planning to run, a full marketing operation around their course: email sequences, landing pages, sales funnels, a community space, and wants all of that inside one login rather than stitching together separate tools. The $1,700+/year entry cost makes the most sense for someone who’s validated demand already and is ready to scale marketing alongside course delivery, not someone testing a first course idea.
Teachable fits a creator who wants the absolute lowest barrier to getting a course live and selling, and is comfortable treating the 7.5% Starter-tier fee as a cost of testing the market before committing to a higher subscription. It also fits a creator with existing marketing tools (an email platform, a landing page builder) who doesn’t need Kajabi’s bundled suite and would rather pay less for a course-focused tool alone.
Learnomy fits a creator who already has, or is comfortable setting up, a WordPress site, and whose priority is keeping full revenue on every sale without a recurring platform bill. It’s a particularly strong fit for a creator who wants to run courses alongside an existing community, blog, or membership site on the same WordPress install, since Learnomy becomes one more layer on infrastructure you already control, rather than a separate system to manage. Multi-instructor academies and course marketplaces with revenue-sharing arrangements are also a strong match, given the Pro tier’s native Stripe Connect payout splitting, something neither Kajabi nor Teachable offers as a built-in feature.
How to Choose
If you want one dashboard that handles courses, email marketing, funnels, and community together, and the $1,700+/year entry cost fits your budget from day one, Kajabi’s consolidation is genuinely valuable. If you want the cheapest possible way to test a course idea and are comfortable giving up 7.5% of early sales, Teachable Starter gets you live fast, with a clear upgrade path once volume justifies Builder’s 0% fee.
If you already have, or are willing to run, a WordPress site, and want to keep every dollar of every sale with no recurring platform subscription required, Learnomy removes the cost conversation from the platform entirely, worth testing before committing to a monthly SaaS bill.
Summary
Kajabi earns its position through genuine marketing-suite consolidation, but the entry price starts above $1,700/year before a single sale. Teachable’s Starter plan is cheap to start but the 7.5% transaction fee becomes expensive at real sales volume, with a clear path to 0% at the Builder tier. Learnomy skips the subscription-versus-fee tradeoff entirely: free forever, zero platform cut on any sale, worth testing before committing to either competitor’s monthly bill.
Whichever you choose, start with one course and a clear price point before building out a full catalog. Testing demand with a single $500 course is a far smaller bet than committing to a year of platform subscription costs upfront.
FAQs
Is Learnomy really free with no platform transaction fee?
Yes. The free plan includes unlimited courses and students with no platform fee on any sale, only standard payment processor fees (Stripe/PayPal) apply, the same processing cost every platform ultimately passes through.
Does Teachable’s transaction fee apply to every plan?
No. The 7.5% transaction fee applies only to the Starter plan. Builder, Growth, and Custom plans drop the platform fee to 0% (standard payment processing still applies).
Can I run email marketing and funnels with Learnomy the way I can with Kajabi?
Not natively, Learnomy focuses on course delivery. You’d pair it with a WordPress email marketing plugin (several good free and paid options exist) to replicate Kajabi’s bundled marketing suite.
Does Kajabi’s branded mobile app come with every plan?
No, the branded mobile app (a $199 value) is included starting at the Growth tier ($199/month annually) and above, not on Basic.
What happens to my course content if I cancel Kajabi or Teachable?
Both are hosted SaaS platforms, so your course structure and student data live on their infrastructure. Exporting varies by platform and plan; confirm current export options directly before committing if data portability matters to you.
Does Learnomy support multi-instructor courses with revenue splitting?
Yes, on the Pro tier ($149/year), via Stripe Connect payouts that handle automatic instructor commission splits, neither Kajabi nor Teachable offers this natively.
Is Learnomy hosting included or a separate cost?
Separate. You need your own WordPress hosting, typically a modest cost (a few dollars to $20-30/month for most creators) compared to a platform subscription, and you keep full control over that hosting choice.
Which of the three is easiest to set up for a first-time course creator?
Teachable and Kajabi are both fully hosted with no server setup required, generally the fastest path to a live course for someone with zero WordPress experience. Learnomy requires a WordPress site first, a bit more setup, but no ongoing platform lock-in once it’s running.
Do any of these three offer course certificates?
Teachable requires its Growth tier for certificates. Kajabi supports course completion tracking across tiers. Learnomy includes Canvas-based certificates with QR verification and Ed25519 digital signatures as part of its certificate system.
Can I migrate an existing Kajabi or Teachable course to Learnomy later?
There’s no automated one-click migration tool between these specific platforms, so switching means exporting what content each platform allows and rebuilding the course structure on the new platform, worth testing in staging first for any course with substantial existing content.
How do refunds and chargebacks work across these three?
Kajabi and Teachable both handle refunds through their own payment processing integration, with the platform tracking the transaction status. Learnomy, since checkout runs through your own Stripe or PayPal account directly, gives you the same refund controls you’d have managing any Stripe/PayPal account, with Learnomy’s course-access logic updating automatically when a refund is issued.
Is any of these three a good fit for a free or very low-priced course strategy?
Learnomy has a structural advantage here since there’s no platform fee eating into low-margin or free-to-paid-upsell funnels. On Teachable’s Starter plan specifically, a 7.5% fee on a low-priced course can represent a meaningful share of an already-thin margin, worth factoring in if your strategy depends on volume at a low price point.
Does any of these three handle VAT/sales tax automatically?
Kajabi and Teachable both include automated tax handling as hosted platforms. Learnomy relies on your Stripe or PayPal account’s own tax tools (Stripe Tax, for example), which cover most regions but require you to configure them directly rather than having tax handling bundled invisibly into the platform fee.
Can I run a free preview lesson or lead magnet on any of these three?
Yes, all three support free or preview content as a lead-generation tool. Kajabi and Teachable handle this through their course drip/access settings, while Learnomy supports it natively since any lesson can be marked open-access regardless of enrollment, a common pattern for turning a free sample lesson into a paid-course funnel without needing a separate landing-page tool.
How much does Teachable cost in 2026?
Teachable’s pricing page (checked 6 November 2026) lists Starter at $29 a month on annual billing, or $39 monthly, with a 7.5% transaction fee. The next two plans are $69 and $139 a month on annual billing, or $89 and $189 monthly, and both list a 0% transaction fee. A 7-day free trial is offered.